This Website uses first and third party cookies to better understand your preferences, to offer you an optimal user experience, to keep track of web statistics, to collect your feedback, to provide online advertising, to enable the integration of third party plug-ins and to keep the Websites operating as smoothly as possible. By continuing to browse this Website, you consent to the use of cookies. Read more about these cookies and how to manage them by clicking here.

Insights from Our Industry Experts

Get purchase trends from analysts spanning more than 24 industries—in the industries that matter most to your business. Read blog posts and whitepapers, view infographics, and watch analyst video interviews to see what, how, and why consumers are spending,
both in store and online.

Insights

News

Trending

Our People Are Our Greatest Asset

The different experiences and perspectives of our people are at the heart of our success. Learn and work with some of the best in the market research industry. NPD offers opportunities in functions spanning client development to research
science, with strong benefits, flexible work schedules, and a global outlook.

Students

Job Search

Data-driven Growth

The NPD Group offers data, industry expertise, and prescriptive analytics to help you grow your business in a changing world. With offices in 27 cities across the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, we help you measure, predict, and improve performance
across all channels.

Our Team

More

Our Customers

Global Presence

Over 2,000 companies worldwide rely on us to help them measure, predict, and improve performance across all channels, including brick-and-mortar and e-commerce. We have operations spanning the Americas, Europe, and APAC. Connect with us at one of our
offices across 29 cities.

Login

Resources

Free Trial

Global Presence

Over 2,000 companies worldwide rely on us to help them measure, predict, and improve performance across all channels, including brick-and-mortar and e-commerce. We have operations spanning the Americas, Europe, and APAC. Connect with us at one of our
offices across 29 cities.

Insights and Opinions From Analysts and Experts in More Than 20 Industries

Are 3rd Party Restaurant Apps Too Restrictive?

I just ordered lunch using the Seamless app on my phone and it got me thinking – is this helping the restaurant or could they benefit from having their own app? I checked out some insights from our report, Delivering Digital Convenience, and the answer seems yes and no.

It’s a good thing this restaurant is going digital in the first place. In a low- to no-growth restaurant world, digital ordering has been a bright spot – it’s up more than 20 percent between 2013 and 2017 with forecasts expecting a similar growth rate through 2020.

What separates restaurant-branded apps versus third-party apps is how they’re used. Most common uses for apps like Grubhub/Seamless, UberEATS, and DoorDash, for example, are looking up items, paying for meals, and checking prices. Branded restaurant apps, however, see special offers and loyalty rewards as their top uses.

The restaurant I ordered from isn’t able to offer me any deals or provide me with loyalty points so are they missing out? In one sense you can say yes because I frequently order from them and I’d like to feel rewarded for my loyalty. Here in New York City there are thousands of places for me to select and there’s no mechanism to generate a repeat trip. However, this a small independent operator and they likely don’t have the means to hire developers to create and maintain their own app.

For the smaller and independent operators, 3rd party apps level the playing field and give them a piece of the growing digital ordering sector without having to make expensive investments in their IT infrastructure. These restaurants might not have the flexibility with the apps that they want but at least they still have a foot in the game like the larger operators do.

And if I’m being totally honest, as long as this restaurant keeps the menu items consistently delicious and keeps delivering them on time, they have my loyalty!

In Russia, throughout most of 2018 there was a noticeable shift in consumer behavior around eating out, with the average individual check in foodservice was virtually flat compared to the same time period in 2017, while the average price per item on the menu increased.